Just be respectful and detailed in your message. All suggestions will be considered.

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I know Portal has been gifted a lot and was free at one point. But I have a Portal 1 copy hanging around in my Steam inventory and I figured that I might aswell give it away. To enter: Tell me something useful, a website, a trick, anything useful that I can use.

Speed reading is the art of silencing subvocalization. Most readers have an average reading speed of 200 wpm, which is about as fast as they can read a passage out loud. This is no coincidence. It is their inner voice that paces through the text that keeps them from achieving higher reading speeds. They can only read as fast as they can speak because that's the way they were taught to read, through reading systems like Hooked on Phonics.

Um... This thing will help you train yourself to stop that, and read sooooooooper fast. Try it dude.

Here is something useful for any steam gamer. Its a website that compiles almost all pc game deals online and rates them. The guy who made it is someone out there on reddit i just can't remember. Portals on my wishlist right now, it'd be very appreciated :).

You're gonna steal these and make some actual advice mallards off of these, aren't you? Anyways, if you get the "Imgur is under a heavy load right now" when you click a link, add .jpg, .png or .gif at the end, should fix the problem.

Former Starbucks barista here. I guess these are really more of ordering tips than unscrupulous secrets.

there is an unlisted size: short (8 oz). This is most cafes' "small," but Starbucks shifted the sizes up a number of years ago (which is why "tall" and "grande" weren't weird names then), making the venti the largest. You can get any hot drink short.

we have a number of flavor syrups that aren't listed on the menu, just ask what we have. Also, despite what many customers think, we have peppermint year round, so we can make peppermint mochas and peppermint white mochas any time of the year. Gingerbread and pumpkin spice are seasonal, but we may not run out of stock for quite a while, so if it's February there's still a chance.

bring your own cup, save 10 cents. Might have to remind the cashier, we forget sometimes.

you can get a drink "for here" and get it in ceramic/glass, feel fancy, waste less.

iced large drinks have extra everything, on account of being 24 and not 20 ounces - extra espresso shot, extra pump of syrup.

it's honestly not that annoying that you have a very specific drink order. It breaks up the monotony, and it's nice not to be a vanilla latte robot. Sometimes people would ask for weird things that I'd make for myself later and end up liking! (protip: green tea latte with peppermint)

You can get the matcha green tea as plain, non-milk tea. It's pretty cheap for matcha tea, too.

that delicious caramel sauce is in fact real caramel. That plastic-tasting caramel syrup is not. Many people don't realize we have both - the caramel sauce is what decorates the cup of the caramel frappuccino and on the whipped cream, the caramel syrup is what flavors the actual frappuccino or a caramel latte.

a caramel macchiato is a vanilla latte with caramel sauce, and least (Starbucks: "most") importantly, the espresso shot put on top of the steamed milk.

if you want a legit cappuccino and you see jugs of milk on the counter, ask for them to use milk from the fridge. Milk needs to be cold to foam that well. Likewise, if you want a soy cappuccino, you can be a pain in the ass and ask for soymilk from the fridge (they might not even have any in there), since soy will barely foam at room temperature, since the cartons are shelf-stable.

if you have no idea what to order, ask us. Since we get free drinks you can count on us trying every single drink in every disgusting combination. Our favorite drink will probably be something excessively complicated we'll be happy to make for you.

on that note, if you're like, green tea latte? disgusting or delicious? you can ask us to sample it. we'll make a whole drink and split it into sample cups. No big deal, our manager will probably like us better for promoting drinks anyways, and you don't have to spend money to find out raspberry mochas are gross and green tea is delicious.

same thing for pastries. We'll sample it if you ask and we have enough (generally yes).

if you really like a certain coffee we have but we don't have it brewing, you can ask for a french press version. French press generally tastes better anyway, and iirc it doesn't actually cost any more and you can order whatever size you normally would. We'll probably sample the rest of the pot anyway. However, this will take significantly longer since, for once, we actually have to brew the coffee ourselves.

we often forget or get too busy, but we actually have giftwrap, especially around the holidays. Ask and we'll make that overpriced mug purty.

I had a few customers with impossible or silly requests. (1) impossibly hot beverages - in excess of 210F. guys. srsly. (2) people who ask for extra hot cappuccinos and are disappointed by them still not being hot enough. This is how a cappuccino is - there's too much air/surface area for the foam layer to ever be hot. If you want hot, get a latte. (3) asking for less-hot milk from the pitchers we've already made. We can't serve milk that has gone below 135, you have to have us make a fresh batch. Sucks for waste, better for you not puking.

in terms of dairy allergy/vegan stuff, the caramel sauce, white chocolate syrup, and pumpkin spice syrup all contain dairy. The chai contains honey. The whipped cream is 100% legit heavy cream. The caramel syrup, mocha syrup, and other syrups are non-dairy. This stuff might not matter to the lactose intolerant, but to some it does. For the caffeine-sensitive, the mocha syrup does not actually have any coffee - it's chocolate sauce, and is just named that because it's what we use for mochas. The "creme-based" list of fraps is usually pretty short, but there are usually more caffeine-free options, just ask.

Now for the unscrupulous part:

in terms of cross-contamination, it's pretty bad. We had blender pitchers labeled "dairy" and "non-dairy," but no one cared. The metal pitchers and blender pitches are rinsed out with pressure, and continue to be used throughout the day. The steam wand on the espresso machine (used for heating milks) is cleaned with a rag that soaks in cleaning solution as well as using the steam to clean out the inside, but the cleaning solution is often pretty contaminated with all the milks (if you think about it, wiping off a little milk and then putting it back in the same liquid... even if you change it out frequently, cross contamination is almost immediate).

The soymilk does not cost more than the dairy. What's more, is it's shelf-stable packaging, and so there's less waste than with dairy.

Frappuccinos have the highest profit margin. Watch someone make the drink and it's apparent - it's mostly ice, generally more than the iced drinks (non-blended) gets. Not a real shake by a long shot, but... so delicious...

those overpriced sandwiches below the pastry case get tossed every night. Yeah, we could take some home, but you always get tired of the food at work and none are particularly great, so yeah. Same goes for "morning" pastries mid-day in many Starbucks. Other pastries are given a shelf life of 2-3 days upon arrival, but generally some of those are always tossed too. Occasionally I had a whole, unopened package of something that was expired, though ideally this is minimized. These things go in the dumpster, and many people will understandably go dumpster diving for these - I mean, it's a trashbag full of slightly-dry pastries, some still shrink-wrapped. They purposely place the dumpsters somewhere more secluded to avoid this (they don't want to be liable), but apparently it can easily be figured out.

we can & do guess what people will get before they order when we're bored. We have stereotypes, they hold pretty well. Except for that one skinny woman who got caramel frappuccinos. Breaking barriers, man.

I think one of the most helpful tips I ever picked up from Reddit was that travel sites track your activity on their sites and systematically raise the prices on you if you continuously visit, So when pricing tickets on travel sites, delete cookies or browse the site in incognito/inprivate modes.

If you see a contest that involves counting jelly beans or something of the like, take every entry and average them out. You'll usually be closer than any other guess. There's science behind it, bit I'm on my phone and can't find it right now. I've used it five times and won the contests twice.

the only file converter you will ever need. adds two icons to youtube, one for downloading the video, and one for downloading an mp3 of the video. very handy when you want to download covers of songs and stuff :)

It took me 20 years to figure out that there is no benefit to buttering bread for a grilled cheese. Best case scenario is it spreads smoothly yet it still takes time and energy that are unnecessary. At worse, you tear your bread and take even longer trying to fix it. A dab of butter in a hot pan quickly followed by bread slices with cheese in the middle does a fantastic job and it doesn't matter how soft your butter is.

EDIT: I no longer need Portal, but the grillem chee tip still stands. Cheers

Keep some flash games or emulators on a USB. I keep Minecraft and a SNES emulator with me, so when I have extra time to burn in class or when I'm just bored, I'll play Tetris Attack or Kirby. Also, If you have internet connection This is great too.

Tubalr, A useful site made by a redditor, finds videos similar to each other and creates a playlist for you! Pretty good for music and bands. Sometimes you can even find some episodes/seasons of shows.

Pretty good google guide it's useful to know your way around google searches. Also has some tips with keyboard shortcuts & research tips for college students.

if you have a smart phone that enables multitasking 'killing' your apps can save battery life. open multitasking and then remove them from the list or if you have an iphone just hit the red minus sign.

if you want to change something about yourself, force yourself to go out of your way to act/do what you want to do/be. After a while it'll become second nature. That's how I fixed my poor posture and learned to cut my food with my non-dominant hand (apparenly very rude but much more efficient)

Here's a tip that has helped me a lot in life, when reading something for importance, be it an essay, book, short story, if you are just not focused enough to critically read it, read the first and last couple sentences of a paragraph and you will get the point of that paragraph. Thanks again for doing this.

NerdCubed, one of my favorite gaming channels on youtube, he has a lot great series, one of them is Free Game Friday, he plays 3 free games every friday (i learnt about some awesome free games here). FYI the game is not for me, i already played it, its for a friend.

Something useful eh? The outside world is evil. Do not go outside. The sun is monster. Any interaction between yourself and the world around you will keep you away from games and Reddit. If you need to venture out only do so when the moon is highest in the night sky. Then and only then is it safe enough to even start considering the idea of walking out into nature. Be safe. I hope this helps in life.

Something else useful besides the life changer above would be that if you have multiple windows open on your screen, just grab the one you want and shake it. This will minimize the rest of the windows besides the one you are currently shaking.

An evil trick. Get between two cars at mcdonalds and say you're just driving throug, not ordering. Drive slowly to the next windo, explain that you didn't order anythin and pulled through by accident (say your mind went on auto-pilot or something). Pull up to the next window, grab the food from the car thatnwas behind you, and drive like the dickens.

I am definitely in need of this game. I have yet to play either one, but have heard great things about them. Thanks for the Giveaway!

Tip- You know when you wake up like 10 minutes or so before your alarm goes off? Instead of going back to sleep for the 10 minutes, get right up. This natural wake up will leave you feeling much more refreshed and awake for the day. Falling back asleep for that short period will only leave you in a deep sleep when the alarm goes off. I have been doing this for a few months and it works great! I even stay awake if I wake up naturally 45 minutes early.